The Best Sales Books for B2B Sales Reps

Now is the perfect time to ask yourself the question: how can I sell more this year? Whether you are a sales development rep, and account executive there are always ways to improve. Reps can ask more astute questions, solve customer’s pain points faster and better overcome objections. While managers can discover new strategies and track deeper metrics in order to predict and influence team revenue.

The good news is that some of the world’s brightest and most successful sales leaders have written amazing books that are packed with actionable tactics that you can use to achieve success. No matter what you’re selling, if you’re selling to businesses, do yourself a favor and check out these 15 amazing sales books.

In this book, inside sales legend Trish Bertuzzi draws on three decades of hands on experience to reveal some of the best ways for business-to-business companies to generate pipeline and achieve explosive growth. Included are tips on how to roll out sales strategies, segment prospects, specialize sales rolls, recruit A-players, retain customers and more.

To sell in this increasingly competitive and crowded marketplace, in which product differentiation has all but vanished, salespeople themselves need to become the key differentiating factor. In one of the best books ever written about B2B sales, Andy Paul reveals how salespeople can set themselves apart and win their customers’ trust. In this book Paul disseminates knowledge acquired over years of field experience to deliver a game-changing strategic guide.

It’s becoming more and more essential for B2B sales leaders need to embrace a metrics-driven climate in order to lead their teams to success. In this book, Mark Roberge draws on his background of scaling sales at Hubspot to reveal the latest science of sales (and make no mistake, sales is a science as much as it is an art). So if you’re looking for ways to drive more predictable streams of revenue, this book is a great read.

According to the U.S. Bureau of labor statistics, one in nine Americans work in Sales. But Daniel H. Pink’s book To Sell is Human proposes that the other eight do as well. Whether pitching ideas to colleagues, courting investors or even trying to talk our children into studying more, the art of persuasion is not only integral to success, but fundamentally human. This book explores the art and science of selling, including five ways to make your sales messages clearer and more persuasive.

B2B sales often requires cross-functional collaboration between salespeople and engineers. Do YOU Mean Business provides a powerful technical/non-technical collaboration toolkit that can accelerate business development efforts. While this book is a perfect fit for sales engineers, it’s also valuable to anyone selling software or technical products. After all, when sales, engineering and product development are on the same page, it’s a lot easier to drive revenue.

This down-to-earth sales manual is brimming with folksy wisdom intended to help marketing and sales professionals outfox the competition. This book doesn’t boast any bleeding edge theories or promise any magic bullets. Instead, it’s a powder keg packed tight with useful tips for igniting revenue. The advice prescribed in this book isn’t what they teach in school. Rather, Rules of the Hunt reveals hard lessons won from years in the field.

Sales expert Jeffrey Gitomer (author of The Little Red Book of Selling) has written a new sales primer that reveals over twenty sales rules that, when followed, can help reps move leads through the sales funnel with minimal effort. While many of his sales laws read like common sense, Gitomer goes into depth explaining practical applications of these rules. Some of his cut-and-dry rules of the game include:

Ask Before Telling

Earn Referrals and Testimonials Without Asking

Become Your Own Brand

For professionals seeking actionable prescriptive sales advice, this book delivers!

A big theme at Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce convention in 2013 was becoming a “customer company.” The most successful sales reps understand that providing customers with an outstanding experience can not only help close deals, but also create brand evangelists. In The Customer Rules, Lee Cockerell, former EVP of Walt Disney World, shares invaluable rules for serving customers efficiently, creatively and sincerely. Cockerell’s rules are both simple and profound. This book is a must read for any sales, marketing or customer service professional who interacts with clients directly.

This book should be required for anyone interested in B2B sales. Every salesperson’s goal is to gain access to the key decision makers in the C-Suite. Examining techniques that can help close deals with C-Level execs once you get them in a room with them (or get them on the phone), Selling to the C-Suite is the product of interviews with executives at more than 500 different organizations. Learn which sales techniques top executives found effective and which they feel should be avoided.

This is quickly becoming the go-to book for sales managers. It teaches coaching skills that maximize team productivity, as well as revealing best practices for recruiting and retaining top sales talent. Though the book was written for managers, it is a must-read for any upwardly mobile sales professional.

Fortune called Konrath’s B2B primer one of eight must-read sales books. One of the definitive books on B2B, Selling to Big Companies puts forth what is required to sell to enterprise companies; examines which challenges that should be overcome and which should be avoided; and explores the process of selling from preparation to pitch.

The digital equivalent of a stocking-stuffer, this little book packs a powerful punch. Gitomer tersely answers one of the most important questions in sales: why do people buy?David Dorsey of the Wall Street Journal rightly called this book a “Red Bull of high energy sales tips and counsel.”

Salespeople always encounter objections (“it costs too much,” “let me think about it,” etc.). This primer teaches that objections don’t have to turn into rejections. Stephan Schiffman, a best selling author on sales techniques, shows how to see objections as opportunities to sell products and services.

This book bills itself as a “simpler, easier, and faster way to sell anything, to anyone, anytime, anywhere.” This book teaches an easy-to-understand method for moving customers through the sales cycle. Mike Kaplan outlines eight distinct steps in every sale that, if avoided, can get in the way of closing deals. This is perhaps the closest thing one can find to an complete turn-key sales method that actually works.

Salesforce Founder Marc Benioff’s book Behind the Cloud isn’t new. In fact, it’s not even strictly a book on sales techniques. However, it still holds up, and we feel that this book should be mandatory reading for anyone interested in selling B2B software. As a pioneer of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) models, Salesforce indeed revolutionized the software industry and the entire business of sales. In his book, Marc Benioff reveals techniques that he has used to transform his customers into brand evangelists, leverage a rich ecosystem of partners, and sell–a lot of –software.Warning: This book might stoke your entrepreneurial spirit and make you want to start your own software company.

Knowledge

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